Red disc on green field. The disc is set slightly toward the hoist so that when the flag is flying it will appear to be in the center. Many illustrations (and probably actual flags, too) have the circle in the center in error, for example, the British Admiralty's Flags of All Nations - 1989. I do not know if the circle was centered when it also included the yellow map of the country. At home I have an example of a Bangladeshi postage stamp ca 1971 with the map on the flag, and I think it shows the circle in the center.
Nick Artimovich, 26 August 1997

The red circle should actually be shifted towards the hoist since 1972. The previous flag (1971-1972) had a centered red disc with a yellow map silhouette of Bangladesh.
Jan Zrzavy, 26 August 1997

The national flag is bottle green in color and rectangular in size with the length to width ratio of 10:6 bearing a red circle on the body of the green. The red circle has a radius of one fifth of the length of the flag. Its center is placed on the middle of the perpendicular drawn from the nine twentieth part of the flag. The background colour symbolizes the greenery of Bangladesh with its vitality and youthfulness while the red disc represents the rising sun and the sacrifice our people made to obtain our independence. Prescribed sizes of the flag for buildings are 305cm x 183cm, 152cm x 91cm and 76cm x 46cm and for vehicles are 38cm x 23cm and 25cm x 15cm.
Collected from http://www.virtualbangladesh.com/bd_flag.html by Dov Gutterman, 23 December 1998.

"The national flag of Bangladesh was a product first conceived by painter
Quamrul Hasan. On the 3rd March 1971, ASM Abdur Rab the then VP of Dhaka
University Students' Union had the honour of hoisting the first flag of
independent Bangladesh at the Dhaka University premises popularly known as Bat-tala.
Bangabandhu Sheikh Mujibur Rahman hoisted the flag of independent Bangladesh at
his residence, 32 Dhanmondi R/A, at the outskirt of Dhaka, on the 23rd March
1971. It was an unknown Awami League worker who hoisted the first flag of
independence at the historical meeting at the then Ramna Race-course on the 7th
March 1971 where Sheikh Mujib tacitly called for armed struggle against
Pakistani occupation Army.

For Quamrul Hasan, making and shaping of the flag needed several months to
complete. Unique features of the first flag of independent Bangladesh were the
absence of the crescent and star (as in the Pakistan's flag), symbol of the
Islamic states. Sheikh Mujibur Rahman and the Bangalees dreamed for the secular
Bangladesh.

The red circular disc with map of Bangladesh symbolizes blood of thousands of
Bangalis killed by the Pakistanis since 1947 in the Golden Bangla. The green
backdrop, needless to say, symbolizes the vitality, youthfulness, greenery and
of course symbolizes also our land as agrarian since the pre-Vedic age. Many
western writers have written an interpretation of the green backdrop of the
Bangladesh flag as the colour of Islam which is essentially wrong information.

Please note the Lonely Planet's Bangladesh 1996 edition. Here the author wrongly
writes "First flown officially from the rebel Bangladesh embassy in Calcutta
when the War of Liberation began". Writing partially correct "The Bangladesh
flag is green for the lush country, not for Islam, as some fundamentalists would
prefer". The CIA world factbook 1997 has also made the same mistake!

The present flag, quite different from the first one, is bottle green in the
background, voided of the golden-coloured map of Bangladesh, rectangular in size
in the proportion of length to width 10:6. The red circle has a radius of
one-fifth of the length of the flag. The red circle's centre is placed on the
intersecting point of the
perpendicular drawn from the nine-twentieth part of the length and the
horizontal line drawn through the middle of its width.

The flag of Bangladesh was first hoisted in the UN September 1974. China used
her veto against admission of Bangladesh in the UN 1972 and repeated in the year
1973. The Bangladesh flag appeared later in the UN's stamp series "Flag of the
member state".

"A Bangladeshi now living in exile in Sweden Mr. Mahbubul Haque had the rare
opportunity of being actively involved in the Flag Hoisting ceremony of
independent Bangladesh at Bat-Tala premises of Dhaka University on the 3rd March
1971. According to him the more radical wing of the Bangladesh Chatra League led
by ASM Abdur Rab hastily arranged an extra emergency meeting at Madhu's Canteen
in the midnight between 2nd and 3rd March 1971 of the executive committee of
BCL (Rab). As the time was passing very fast and the then Pakistani military
junta led by Gen. Yahya Khan ordered inflow of the Pakistani Army to Dhaka at a
rate of one Boeing 707 filled with Pakistani soldiers every day.

Anticipating the imminent Pakistani onslaught, Rab reasoned that there was no
other alternative than hoisting the National flag of independent Bangladesh at
11:00 hrs on the 3rd March and in the afternoon Swapan Choudhury of BCL (Rab)
would read the proclamation of the Independence of Bangladesh. Swapan Choudhury
died later in a combat action during the war of liberation 1971. Rab hoisted the
flag as it was planned in the emergency meeting of the Bangladesh Chatra League
(Rab), he did not forget to burn the Pakistani flag seconds before he hoisted
the flag of Bangladesh. The author of the text asked ASM Rab during a river
cruise with him at the Karnaphuli river in Chittagong, November 1996 if he still
possessed the same flag at his collection. He remained silent.

Mahbubul Haque was then a BCL(Rab) activist, organised active participation of
students of Dhaka College in the armed struggle against the Pakistani occupation
army 1971. He now lives with his family in the outskirt of Stockholm. ASM Abdur
Rab is now minister of shipping and river transport of the Bangladesh
Government."

The first flag of Bangladesh. I don't know what the official proportions were, but I have used 2:3 as it seems reasonable to assume that the Pakistani practice would have continued for a while. Someone quoted Whitney Smith as saying that the map was omitted because of the difficulty involved in displaying it correctly on both sides. I have some doubts about this explanation: Cyprus has overcome the problem of a two-sided flag, as has Saudi Arabia. Another explanation suggests itself: namely, that the map may have been an unpleasant reminder of the partition of Bengal.
Vincent Morley, 1 September 1997

The first flag of the independence movement. The flag initially had the the map of Bangladesh in gold in the center of the red circle. This was the original design of the flag of Bangladesh that the valiant freedom fighters fought under during the liberation war. On the 3rd March 1971, ASM Abdur Rab, the then VP of Dhaka University Students´ Union hoisted the flag for the first time at the historic Dhaka University location known as "bawt-tawla". This flag was also raised at the then Dhaka Race Course at then Ramna Racecourse (now Shuhrawardy Uddayan) when Sheikh Mujibur Rahman gave his historic speech proclaiming "this struggle is the struggle for liberation."
(The "bawt-tawla" incidently means the shade of the banyan tree in Bengali. This was, and still is, a popular meeting place for activist students of the University of Dhaka.)
Collected from http://www.virtualbangladesh.com/bd_flag.html by Dov Gutterman, 23 December 1998.

On 28 September 2008, the PTI (Press Trust of India) Agency reported yet
another hypothesis:"A map of Bangladesh, then East Pakistan, was included in
the hurriedly prepared flag of the newborn nation as suggested by Indira Gandhi,
according to veteran photo journalist Shahidul Alam. "It was on the insistence
of then Indian premier Indira Gandhi that the map of East Pakistan was included
in the flag, so as to make sure that people do not confuse the Indian state of
West Bengal with war-ridden east Bengal," Shahidul, recently in India for an
exhibition of his photographs, says.[...]"West Bengal was a part of
India and people on either side of the border were sentimental of the word
'Bengal'. The map of Bangladesh was inserted to avoid any confusion among the
populace," he says. Such a motif was aimed to give a flip to the 'Muktiyoddhas'
(liberation warriors) as well, although there can be no denial of the fact that
it was a sad reminiscent of partition of Bengal during British colonisation."
Source:
http://www.ptinews.comIvan Sache, 4 October 2008

As I recall,
Indira Gandhi's concern was that if the war between Pakistan and the
Bangladeshis had gone on any longer, the people of West Bengal might rise and
form a Bengali national movement, pushing for reunification of the whole of
Bengal. It was for this reason that the Indian Army invaded East Pakistan. In
providing a map, she was making it clear (to those who were able to interpret
it) that the flag represented the former East Pakistan, and not West Bengal. The
map was as likely dropped as much because people could not relate to the map, as
for clarity of design. Mike Oettle, 5 October 2008

I noticed at
the cricket test series between New Zealand and Bangladesh quite a few of the
spectators at the ground using the old Bangladeshi flag, the one with the golden
map on the red disk. It must still be a popular flag locally. Is it still
regarded as an official variant?James Dignan, 20 October 2008

Reverse of 1971 Flag

by Jorge Candeias, 29 May 1999

I believe the map ought to be correct on both sides. Pedersen refers to the difficulty of rendering the map correct on both sides
of the flag leading to dropping the map.
Ole Andersen, 25 May 1999

Erroneous 1971 flag reports

image by
Falko Schmidt

Browsing in my files I found a flag, published in an East German journal (NBI
- Neue Berliner Illustrierte 13/73) and illustrated here. I don't know, if this
flag was ever used. Can anyone help?Falko Schmidt, 29 September 2001

This flag is similar to one that I found on a flag plate in Dicionário
Enciclopédico Koogan Larousse Selecções (Encyclopedic Dictionary Koogan
Larousse Selecções), vol. 1. The disc is a lot smaller and it's not red, rather
somewhere between purple and pink (lilac?). This colour isn't due to some glitch
in the printing of the source, since adjacent flags that have red in them are
perfectly normal (see image here). If so, and given the lack of any evidence
(at least so far) that such a design was used, then I guess it is a case of
perpetuating an error from one source to another. It appears to be
erroneous.Jorge Candeias, 2 October 2001, 6 February 2005

A Daily
Star article which details the Bangladeshi Education Minister's fight
against cheating in exams, has the following lines:

"Milan's (the minister) visit took all by surprise. A red flag was flattering
atop a tree at Nilphamari High School ground as the state minister was supposed
to fly there any day. But his chartered helicopter landed at Nilphamari stadium.
He then rushed to the Alia Madrassah without giving any intimation and scope for
preparedness."

I presume the red flag was an official flag indicating a visit by the minister
but the article gives no further information. Can anyone else shed light on
this? (Please write to us if you know of this usage.)Zane Whitehorn, 16 March 2004

This Red flag was only to indicate the minister's visit. This was also to
warn the cheaters against the possible visit. This has no official significance
or otherwise.Ragib Hasan, 5 November 2004

The red flag was flying because it indicates to the helicopter that adjacent
field is for landing. It was just for identification.SM Touhidur Rahman,
17 April 2012